Act II: You stupid Idiot
Much sadness ensued. I had a complete meltdown.

ActIII: SEUS to the Rescue?
After restarting my laptop a few times I installed SEUS. The SEUS was able to communicate with my phone. Yay. I tried wotan again and it nearly completed before exiting while the final CS files were being written. I tried it again and it completed the installation this time. My phone works!

Postscript:
I am running AVG antivirus, so I don't know if that played a role. One reason I went with Wotan for de brand ing was that I felt that the actual firmware files were from a good source. Also, I only used one credit during the whole process. So far, I am very satisfied with the results, and I would use Wotan again.

Does anyone have any tips or suggestions of where I should go from here as far as installing programs, more themes, ring tones, etc?